Plantinga Chapter 4

                After the fall, the story does not end.  There is redemption.  God is merciful even through our sinfulness.   The fall is only the start of God’s plan to redeem the world and bring it back to his intended goodness.  I really like the quote from Barbara Brown Taylor saying, “What we have lost… is a full sense of the power of God – to recruit people who have made terrible choices; to invade the most hopeless lives and fill them with light; to sneak up on people who are thinking about lunch, not God, and smack them up side the head with glory”.  I really like this quote because it not only shows truth from the stories of God working through the most unlikely candidates to do his will, but also gives hope that just like our forerunners in the faith who have messed up time and time again, we too can be used no matter how broken we are.  I always feel the pressure that I cannot do God’s work because I have made a lot of mistakes in the past.  It is refreshing to be reminded that God uses the beaten and broken.  I just need to say yes when He calls me.  I must obey the voice of the Lord.  This then brings Plantinga to the Ten Commandments.  He has an interesting look at things and says,” Moses emerges with God’s Ten Commandments, a set of requirement that people have to fulfill not in order to get rescued by God from slavery, but because they have been rescued”.  I like how he words this because we usually think of needing the commandments to be saved.  It’s hard to comprehend that God takes us while we are still sinners and then through his grace not only saves us but then teaches us how to live a meaningful life.  God’s Ten Commandments don’t keep us from good things, but rather they restrain us from bad things, things that will hurt or kill us.  They promote a flourishing and meaningful life.  They help us to be wise.  They also give us a freedom and help us stay away from the sins that enslave us. 

                But how are we actually redeemed.  We are redeemed through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ the Son of God the Father.  Plantinga notes that Jesus came incarnate in a baby.  We could have come any way he wanted with all the power of heaven, however; instead he emptied himself to be a servant.  By being the sacrificial lamb, Christ can take on all the sins of the World.  He can bring us back to the way we are meant to be with God.  Plantinga goes on to explain that unless as Calvin wrote “we grow as one body with him” Christ’s sacrifice is meaningless to us.  This leads to the importance of the church.  We must die and be raised with Christ.  I really enjoyed our talk in class about how this must be a death of our old selves.  Professor Ribeiro talked about how when we are dead we can no longer be hurt by earthly things.   I had never really thought about it that way.  It is as if we are becoming stronger and less vulnerable by giving up ours old selves for the new and better one that God will provide us.  In our class discussion, someone also talked about how when we give up our old self is when we find our true self.  It seems so scary to give up our self.  If feels as if you are giving up all your hopes, your dreams, and yours ambitions.  But this is not the case, you just can’t understand the joys of the new hopes, dreams, and ambitions you will have that line up with God’s plan until we give up our own plans.  It is as if we only see our own self-centered futures in our old self, but God opens us to see a much bigger picture through our birth in him.  And this is still only a limited view.  God has a big plan, much to broad for us to comprehend, and therefore we must trust in him and ask forgiveness for our short mindedness.

                Plantinga then talks of a double grace: justification and sanctification.  We are justified and saved of our sins and therefore made right with God.  God not only justify us to save us from damnation.  He also sanctifies us so we can become more and more Christ like.  God blesses us with wisdom as we continue to grow in our faith.  He saves us from our sins but also saves us from ourselves by slowly shaping and molding us into righteous followers of him.  He gives us both temporary and eternal peace. 

                In this chapter Plantinga challenges us to focus on God’s will for our lives.  He encourages us to let God work in us as individuals as well as a community to grow in our faith with him and be justified as well as sanctified.  Then he urges us to go out and continue to live out our faith as we become better Christ like followers.  God can use us no matter how broken we are to carry out his plan and redeem his creation and bring it back to him.